Politics

This is one thing that I am trying to figure out. It is a well known fact that the voter turnouts in recent elections, presidential or otherwise, are rather low. A quick look at the charts on PBS website shows that since the 60's, voter turnout has been on the decline: http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/votestats.html It seems to me that people don't really seem to care anymore. Indeed, in an article about this on CNN, one guy who was interviewed, when asked this question, said "it doesn't make a difference to me". Other people I have asked said similar things and expressed similar views, that their either "too busy" or "i don't have time to think about it" and so on. Co…

PBS's Frontline has a new episode out this week about the showdown between the United States and Iran. As usual it provides great insight into the conflict. The entire episode is available for viewing online. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/showdown/etc/synopsis.html One of the points presented in the piece is that the US missed an opportunity to work with Iran on settling Iraq before the insurgency. Unfortunately I think the producers let Iran off the hook for much of its two-wrongs thinking. If Iran is such a white hat how 'bout they show it by being a good neighbor instead of a bad one? People wondering "whether Bush will start another war" ar…

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/18/science.race/index.html Just wondering what you all thought of this guy. I don't know anything about him, really. Is this race remark a big deal in Europe? Seems like the comments I've read debunking his comments aren't really substantive - rather sound more like people who are concerned with the downstream implications rather than the accuracy of his statement. But is it really irrational? How is he wrong? Don't misunderstand, I don't think he's right. I just want the meat and potatoes that proves him wrong. Anyone?

Why does money determine who becomes president of the United States instead of ability, vision, and leadership? If you disagree with my opening premise, that’s fine, but I am opening this thread with that as a maxim, so please do treat it as a given. Money, or more accurately, the ability to raise lots of it, determines the final list of 2 or 3 from which the citizenry can choose when entering the ballot box. On several occasions and for too many years, when I have arrived at the local high school or community college to place my vote, I have felt disheartened knowing that I was not choosing the best person for the job, but I was instead choosing from the …

In relevance to the upcoming Nobel announcements, a UK judge ruled that Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth can be shown in British schools but only with a disclaimer pointing out nine "errors" in the film where it breaks with the scientific consensus. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm Thoughts?

This thread is intended to talk about the larger issue of common ground in modern politics, but I thought I'd actually start things off with a small set of specific examples. These examples come from a new book released October 9th by Bob Beckel and Cal Thomas. Beckel is a Democratic strategist who's mostly known as the guy who first translated the term "where's the beef" into the political arena. Thomas is a conservative columnist in national syndication. Both have had done their fair share of polarization over the years, but they say they're tired of it and their new book proves the point (or so they say; I haven't read it yet). They also do a regular column on the…

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-gop2307oct23,0,5722391.story The Republican Party is following the lead of national Democrats in disenfranchising voters in several states that have tried to move their primaries ahead of those in Holy and Sacred Iowa and New Hampshire. The GOP approach is a bit different -- removing half the delegates of the offending states. But the effect is the same, returning control to the Holy and Sacred States of Iowa and New Hampshire. Meanwhile the story continues to go vastly under-reported in the press, which has a vested interest in the matter, benefitting tremendously from the drama of having these two states dete…

It seems like it died.

Source: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np (I haven't seen anything on this in the news... strange) Yeah, don't tax and spend beats tax and spend any day... Is Bush the most fiscally irresponsible president in US history? Is he squandering America's present economic prosperity? I'll go ahead and say yes to both questions.

Quote: "" Contracts With Iran and China Concern U.S. By JAMES GLANZ BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 — Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran. The Iraqi electricity minister, Karim Wahid, said that the Iranian project would be built in Sadr City, a Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is controlled by followers of the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr. He add…

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303076,00.html This story is just an example, so I really don't want to argue about it's specifics unless they represent a broader application. But when do you get to be yourself? When are you "off work"? Why are our employers dictating how we can behave off work? Why can't the woman in this story post personal pics, info, sexual or not, etc? She's not allowed to be a slut, if she so desires, and perform her job? One has nothing to do with the other. The excuse I keep getting is that you represent the company, even outside of work. Accepting that premise implies we are only really free when we're unemployed. …

Gotta love the political irony in this, especially coming just days after the Pakistan statement from Barrage Obomba. Just two years ago Democrats were OUTRAGED about warrantless wiretapping of American civilians placing overseas telephone calls to suspect terrorist nations. So much hay was made over that issue that it surely contributed to the mid-term elections that put Democrats in the legislative majority. My how times have changed. Over the weekend, carefully away from the prying eyes of the mass media, congress, for once, acted quickly and quietly. The new law signed by President Bush yesterday allows the federal government to wiretap any overseas call pla…

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/09/26/art-or-bioterrorism-who-cares/ Some of you might remember the case of Steve Kurtz. When emergency responders arrived at his home to treat his wife for heart failure (which she ended up dying of), they saw lots of scary things: sciency stuff like petri dishes with bacteria cultures. Being reasonably minded, level headed people, the emergency responders jumped to the only conclusion for the possible use of this sort of thing: BIOTERROR Kurtz's wife's body was confiscated and his block quarantined, his house ransacked and anything that could give a potential clue to his activities confiscated. Kurtz was detained and questi…

I read something recently about a youngish, up-and-coming novelist whose agent asked him to look at a screenplay and consider turning it into a novel. The screenplay had been written by a wannabe politico who at the time (1996) was a high-ranking public health official. Anyway, the story itself was pretty ordinary, about an outbreak in the US which becomes an epidemic, and the hero detective whose dogged determination pays off and he not only helps to "save the country" but uncovers the truth about the epidemic: it was smallpox unleashed by Saddam Hussein in a plot to destabilise the US of A. OMG... So, as the hero is being congratulated by the Commander in Chie…

Is our judiciary under seige, or is the extra attention warranted? That's the question I hope to focus on with this thread. Bill O'Reilly does this quite often on the subject of child pedophiles, sending Fox News reporters to challenge judges in their own driveways when they let pedophiles go with sentences he feels are too lenient. But it's not just him! I just watched an ABC News report exposing Texas judge Sharon Keller for closing her courthouse at 5pm rather than let it stay open a few minutes longer to hear a potential appeal on a Death Row inmate who was then executed shortly thereafter. ABC showed the judges photograph and even stationed a camera outs…

""THE environmental campaigner Al Gore is being tipped as a favourite to win the Nobel peace prize in Oslo this Friday in a controversial move that could place saving the planet above saving people from war and conflict. Gore, a former American vice-president and failed presidential candidate, has reinvented himself as the “Goracle” with a rock star following after presenting last year’s Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, about the dangers of climate change. He was nominated for the Nobel prize jointly with Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a Canadian Inuit activist who has campaigned about the effect of climate change on Arctic peoples. " .. ......... Some…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071010/pl_nm/usa_security_democrats_dc Democrats refused to grant retroactive immunity to telcos that participated in Bush's illegal spying program, and pushed through a bill that rolls back some of the sickening provisions they passed in August as part of a compromise with Bush and other Republicans, reinstating FISA oversight and requiring 1 year blanket warrants for surveillance involving American citizens. My take (as an avid EFF supporter): ABOUT F*CKING TIME

We already know that if everyone in China owned a car the oil industry would not be able to supply the fuel. Never mind the calculations for China's eventual energy needs, or India's, or Africa's. Supplies of oil are only just keeping up with current demand from developed countries, so the supply chain will need to about treble in size to cope with the coming demand, and the industry admits it simply will not be able to do this. But we continue to cut down 200 and 300 year old trees because people want furniture, and houses. The demand for resources continues to accelerate, and we can't be all that far from the point where we just use them all up. Like the collapse of…

The US Dollar is now valued below the Canadian Dollar. http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?amt=1&from=USD&to=CAD&submit=Convert& What does this say about America's fiscal policy? The Senate just approved a measure to raise the statutory limit on the national debt: http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00354 The Fed just lowered interest rates to satisfy Wall Street. Is the greenback becoming increasingly irrelevant? I think the Fed has been underregulating and our government has been far too unconcerned with sound fiscal policy. The Bush tax cuts c…

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/life-and-liberty/ Ron Paul is trying to turn Roe vs Wade into a states rights issue. He has a rather unique perspective on this: He's an OB/GYN and also a libertarian. I can certainly see where he's coming from. However, I feel this is an extremely difficult issue and that the ramifications transcend states rights. What this calls into question is at what point humans receive the protections of the Constitution and come under the rule of law. Are these things States should be deciding? I certainly don't think so...

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/10/us.turkey.armenians/index.html?iref=mpstoryview The Betrayed: (Armenian Genocide documentary) http://video.google.nl/videoplay?docid=-7833166317264817428&q=armenie+genocide&total=1399&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2 the world is watching.

Well, the question is pretty well summed up in the thread title. Here's the proverbial rock dropped into the pond of water. Let's see where the ripples go and what they hit.

Bush has vetoed a bill that would expand health coverage for mostly lower income children an additional 4 million from the 6.6 million the program presently covers. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071003/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_children_s_health The bill, which costs approximately $7 billion a year, would be funded by a $0.61 increase in the excise tax on cigarettes. I really don't know what to say. Bush is one of, if not the most fiscally irresponsible presidents in history, and has bolstered defense spending (NOT including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) to levels which exceed the rest of the world combined. Now he's trying to paint himself as somehow b…

Yup, in the United States of America, voters in two major states will not be allowed to have a say in their states' primaries. And those are voters in the Democratic Party -- that stalwart defender of freedom and opposition to those evil conservatives. This bizarre sequence of events is happening because of issues regarding the scheduling of primaries. In essence it has become a battle over who holds power in the Democratic Party -- national or local officials. Essentially what's happened is that state officials moved the primaries ahead of February 5th, which is the date that the party decreed that state elections must follow. The reason for that date is tha…

One of the most ridiculous arguments I keep hearing about Iran's "supposed" (but probably very likely) pursuit of nuclear weapons technology, is that Ahmedinejad has vowed to drop the very first one they build on Tel-Aviv, or words to that effect. But this would be both a very improbable and very irrational act on Iran's behalf. Not only because Ahmed does not actually have his finger on any button(s), but because it is fairly unlikely that the mullahs are prepared, despite all their thundering, to invite annihilation of their country from the inevitable Israeli/US retaliation. If it is such a dangerous proposition to allow some country, branded part of an axis …